Lehre allgemein

• Rechte indigener Völker (Konsultationsrechte, FPIC)
• Rechte der Natur
• Umweltgerechtigkeit
• Ressourcenkonflikte und Konflikttransformation
• Interpretative Forschungsdesigns, Politische Ethnographie
• Research-based learning (RBL)
• Theorien der Internationalen Beziehungen
• Regionaler Fokus Lateinamerika, insbesondere Amazonien

 

Seminar P380: Resources Conflicts in Latin America 

Sommersemester 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
Tuesdays 12:15–13:45h, weekly (15 Abr 2025 – 22 Jul 2025)

Resource extraction fuels conflict in Latin America, especially in the Andes and the Amazon. Conflicts range from symbolic protests to the formation of influential civil society movements and violent clashes between local populations, companies, state and other (armed) actors. Among the manifold reasons for these conflicts are struggles for land rights, competing claims to use resources, contestation about the distribution of benefits and protests against social, environmental and cultural impacts of extractive projects.

Resource conflicts in Latin America are historically embedded into global, regional, and national dynamics. For Europe, Latin America has been a source of natural resources since colonial times. For the world market, main production sites for lithium, copper, soya, ect. are situated in the Andes and the Amazon where they cause major damages to fragile ecosystems. However, for most Latin American countries the export of these resources is a central economic pillar, and a regional “commodities consensus” (Svampa 2015) exists, even though governments have different political orientations. At the same time, national, regional, and international institutions promote legal frameworks to make extractive industries more sustainable.

This seminar focuses on the multi-scalar entanglements of conflicts over resource extraction in Latin America. Central topics are the economic, social, and political dynamics of extracting different types of natural resources; legal frameworks to protect local populations and mechanisms of participatory environmental governance; underlying development models and questions of “environmental justice”.

Link to the course on Alma.

 

Seminar P377: Fighting for Mother Earth. Rights of Nature from the Global South to (Trans)national Climate Activism 

Sommersemester 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
Wednesdays 12:15–13:45h, weekly (16 Abr 2025 – 23 Jul 2025)

Rights of Nature (RoN) is an innovative legal approach which promises an alternative to the destructive human-centred development model, which has led to a global climate crisis and an era diagnosed as the Anthropocene. RoN conceptualise nature to have an inherent right to exist and to flourish (Borràs 2016). Since the late 2000s, several countries have adopted legislations recognising rivers, mountains, or forests as living beings, especially Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador as well as New Zealand, India, and the USA (Kauffman and Martin 2021). At the same time, also in Germany, lawyers, academics, and activists are exploring possibilities to expand the idea of rights-bearing subjects for more effective environmental protection, e.g., in struggles over the Hambacher Forst.

Indigenous concepts of human-nature relationships have inspired RoN and resulted in a fast-growing political movement, which is also pushing the United Nations to complement the Universal Declaration on Human Rights with a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth (United Nations General Assembly 2020). However, in academic literature ‘the environment’ is usually considered to be a passive site or object of struggle. The definition, value, and agency of non-human entities, such as rivers or forests, are not taken into consideration, and only anthropological literature recognizes that these conflicts are also ‘ontological conflicts’, i.e., ‘conflicts involving different assumptions about “what exists”’ (Blaser 2013, 547).

This block seminar gives an overview of the origins of RON and evaluates their transformative potential for climate activism. Focus is set on a critical understanding of the potentials and pitfalls of RoN against the backdrop of postcolonial readings.

Link to the course on Alma.

 

Seminar P0371 International Relations from the Global South. Latin American Concepts and Approaches

Wintersemester 2024/25 
Wednesdays 12:15–13:45h, weekly (26 Oct 2025 – 05 Feb 2025)

This seminar sheds lights on the potentials and pitfalls for decolonising the discipline of International Relations with concepts and approaches from non-Western contexts. Focusing on Latin America, we will focus on questions of development and buen vivires; self-determination and feminist approaches to cuerpo-territorio/body-territory; access to resources and (neo)extractivism; human-nature relationships and Rights of Nature as well as pluriversal thinking and indigenous relational ontologies to rethink the discipline. The seminar is situated in political science, however, it is explicitly interdisciplinary and draws on decolonial literature, social movements studies, anthropological and critical legal perspectives as well as indigenous peoples’ ideas of political concepts and social science approaches.

Link to the course on Alma.

 

Seminar P0385: Understanding Climate Activism. Interpretive Research Design and Political Ethnography

Wintersemester 2024/25, 2022/23
Tuesdays 12:15–13:45h, weekly (25 Oct 2022 – 07 Feb 2023)

Interpretive research has increasingly gained attention in the discipline of International Relations research. The seminar situates interpretive research in the social sciences, especially political science, and discusses different aspects of ethnographic fieldwork. Focus is set on participant and non-participant observation in the “real” and in the virtual world. Students are offered the chance to gain first practical experiences in the design and implementation of an own interpretive research project.

The seminar illuminates the basis for interpretative research designs and the use of ethnographic research in political science. Based on central texts, the seminar will elaborate on the epistemological and ontological background of ethnographic research, ethical implications, data gathering as well as data analysis. Further, students will get an overview on the current state of the art of political ethnography and the application of ethnography in different thematic areas. Just to name a few examples, ethnography has been used to investigate the work of international organizations, diplomats, international legal standards on the ground or resistance and protest.

The course will critically reflect on the advantages and limitations of interpretive research designs and ethnographic methods, considering the epistemological, ontological and ethical premises to be considered by researchers.

***Please note that the class will include group work and three “lab-sessions”.

Link to the course on Alma.

 

Seminar P0386: Indigenous Struggles in International Relations: Conceptual Approaches and Claims from Latin America

Wintersemester 2023/24, 2022/23 
Thursdays, 12:15-13:45h, weekly (20 Oct 2022 – 09 Feb 2023)

Indigenous representatives have become highly visible political actors in international relations. However, the threat that indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination poses to state sovereignty makes it “perhaps the most controversial and contested terms of the many controversial and contested terms in the vocabulary of international law” (Crawford 2001, 7).

This seminar sheds lights on the potentials and pitfalls international and transnational engagements holds for advancing indigenous peoples’ claims for recognition and self-determination. Focusing on Latin American indigenous actors, the role of international law, international organisations, and transnational activism for indigenous peoples’ struggles will be discussed. Critical issues centre around questions of self-determination, representation, territorial rights, stewardship, access to resources, and human-nature relationships.

The seminar is situated in political science, however, it is explicitly interdisciplinary and draws on decolonial literature, social movements studies, anthropological and critical legal perspectives as well as indigenous peoples’ ideas of political concepts and social science approaches.

Link to the course on Alma.

 

Seminar P0389 Arts-based research. A toolkit for diversifying knowledge practices in the Social Sciences, with MA Verena Gresz 

Wintersemester 2023/24 

Link to the course on Alma.

 

 

Sommersemester 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 

• Seminar P380: Resources Conflicts in Latin America 
• Seminar P377: Fighting for Mother Earth. Rights of Nature from the Global South to (Trans)national Climate Activism 

Wintersemester 2024/25 

• Seminar P0371: International Relations from the Global South. Latin American Concepts and Approaches

Wintersemester 2024/25, 2022/23 

• Seminar P0385: Understanding Climate Activism. Interpretive Research Design and Political Ethnography 

Wintersemester 2023/24 

• Seminar P0389: Arts-based research. A toolkit for diversifying knowledge practices in the Social Sciences, with MA Verena Gresz 

Wintersemester 2023/24, 2022/23 

• Seminar P0386: Indigenous Struggles in International Relations: Conceptual Approaches and Claims from Latin America